Frustrated moodler...

So...
I decided to try moodle this summer and spent some time setting up a site. My students love it and we have been doing some interesting work... I don't want to give up any of it. But... last week my admin folder's permissions randomly changed and locked me out. The folks at the server finally fixed that on Sunday and it had been great until today. During class today we were supposed to be looking at sources online, using the chat function for an activity and posting on a forum. The website timed out again and again all day. In the end I moved the activity to wikispaces and enjoyed a trouble free afternoon...

Has anyone else had trouble with this? I guess it is a problem with the hosting server. Who does everyone else use? I don't want to mention the name of mine until I ascertain the problem, because they have been helpful until now.

Long day in the office...
Richard

Richard SmartOakland Mills High SchoolColumbia, MD, USA.

http://learningsmart.org

"There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England." - Sir Winston Churchill

This does sound like a server problem rather than the software. I'd pass the details, including the error messages on to your hosts and get them to double check the settings. Explain you're a teacher and you will not put up with this happening.

I've been using CSNewMedia for two years and Carl's been excellent, even doing a lot of the 'behind the scenes' stuff for both Moodle and Wordpress for me.

Simple thing here is where you have your Moodle hosted. To work effectively (unless you have a great and reliable internet connection) you need to have your VLE hosted internally. This means you can access the Moodle server at the fastest possible speeds within school and then slower outside of school. If you host it online, you are always limited to the internet connection and bandwidth within school. Most schools seem to max out their internet connection during the school day - meaning that Moodle simply cannot compete.

Any VLE should be hosted internally in the school for the fastest possible service. Also, be aware that the online chat function in Moodle isn't very good - it is powered by Javascript and nothing more, so isn't very powerful at all.

I've got a fully dedicated server in the best possible UK location for internet speed - when I use my external Moodle at home it works perfectly. Yet in school it slows to an unusable crawl - especially when lots of students are trying to use it. There isn't the internet speed / service to cope with it in school. Hence why we've switched to an internal Moodle. County difficulties prevent external access to this, but the best practice with Moodle is to install internally, get internal access when at school (potentially at 1gig network speed) and then external access to the site when outside of school.

Thanks for the help.
I would love to have moodle hosted internally, but I don't think that is going to be an option for me. We have the same problems with the county not allowing it to be accessed externally. This would spoil some of the activities I am trying to do.

Wikispaces seems to work fine when I have all my students accessing pages during class and moodle was fine until earlier this week. Now it just seems to jam up, while other websites are just fine. I think you are probably right, but I am concerned that my webhost has not even bothered to answer my e-mails:(. I think it may be time for a change.

Enjoy the weekend!
Richard

Richard SmartOakland Mills High SchoolColumbia, MD, USA.

http://learningsmart.org

"There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England." - Sir Winston Churchill